Future Research Needs - Methods and Projects

Future Research Needs – Methods Research Series

Comparative Effectiveness Reviews, systematic reviews of existing research on the effectiveness, comparative effectiveness, and comparative harms of different health care interventions, are intended to provide relevant evidence to inform real-world health care decisions for patients, providers, and policymakers.

An important part of these reviews is to not only synthesize the evidence, but also to identify the gaps in evidence that limited the ability to answer the systematic review questions. As part of a new effort in 2010, AHRQ supports EPCs to work with various stakeholders to further develop and prioritize the future research needed by decisionmakers.

The Future Research Needs Projects are intended to be used by researchers and funders of research to help improve the body of comparative effectiveness evidence that would be useful for decisionmakers. Because this is a new product with no previous established methodology, the EPCs will initially pilot various methods for identifying and prioritizing evidence needs.

Concurrent research on various methodologic issues will complement their experiences and inform eventual guidance on approaches to determine and prioritize future research needs. A working table of contents is presented below.